


How We Live Now

by Daisiestdaisy (Doyle)



Category: Arrested Development
Genre: Backstory, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-20
Updated: 2015-05-20
Packaged: 2018-03-31 12:08:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3977461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doyle/pseuds/Daisiestdaisy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were friends now, and when your Mom was making your third week as company President a corporate-themed hell on Earth you called your best friend to complain about it. It didn’t mean anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How We Live Now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [annaloverofarendale](https://archiveofourown.org/users/annaloverofarendale/gifts).



> Annaloverofarendale's been keeping this ship supplied with new fic almost single-handedly, and I owed her fic. She suggested coffee shop AU, which this is not. It is not even set in a coffee shop. It is entirely about two people talking while they drink beverages, so there's that.

They were friends now, and when your Mom was making your third week as company President a corporate-themed hell on Earth you called your best friend to complain about it. It didn’t mean anything. It was just what friends did.  
  
“Parents, man,” Tony said, late that night, after his audience had emptied out and the bar was quiet. “My family drives me crazy too. I guess I never really fit in.”  
  
He hadn’t talked about them much. All Gob had to go on was the scary dad-character in his act, and things he’d read years ago in magazine interviews, and his vague, lifelong sense that everyone else’s family was just like his own, give or take a couple of million dollars and a treason charge. “So do they ignore you for years and then it’s all, ‘hey, Tony, you have to do this thing for the family’? I get that. And you’re like, ‘sure, Mom, maybe call just to talk some time. If I’d ever visited you in prison I bet I would’ve seen at least one phone.’”  
  
Tony made an unhappy face. “No, it’s not that, it’s just... they’re so supportive, you know? Like, being a magician, not staying at home to help my dad run the bakery, not ever getting married, when I came out...”  
  
“You fake-came-out to...” Tony shushed him, whipping around in his seat to check nobody could hear them - “You real-came-out to your parents?”  
  
“Uh, yeah? I’m a professional? My agent knows the real story, and my kid’s mom, and Sally, and you, so let’s keep it to just those four, okay?”  
  
It was kind of like being in an entourage again, a secret one this time, just him and Tony and those three others; and he could have done without Sally Stickwell, and Ann wasn’t taking his calls so he still didn’t know why she’d bailed on Cinco when he’d thought they were revenge-friends now, and he’d never met the agent, but he still liked being part of it.  
  
Tony’s hand was resting on the tabletop, and because he was thinking about how they were kind of a team, and he was happy, he almost reached out to cover it with his own before he caught himself. He gripped his drink instead. “So,” he said, in his most platonic voice. “You came out to your parents.”  
  
“Yeah. And it was just like everything else I ever did – fine, great, that’s just as good as your brother going to rabbinical school or all your other siblings giving us grandchildren, we’re proud of you whatever you do.”  
  
Gob tried, he really did try hard, to see why this was a problem, and that struggle must have shown on his face because Tony shrugged and looked away from him.  
  
“It’s just a lot of pressure, that’s all. Whatever, I don’t even care.”  
  
“Families,” Gob said, figuring that _can’t-live-with-‘em_ tone was safe even if he didn’t understand why.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
They were quiet for a minute. The guy who Tony refused to call his assistant finished clearing the stage of glitter and left. The last two customers, grey-haired seniors on bar stools, drank up and shuffled silently to the exit together. Gob made to ask if there was a word, if old gay guys who hooked up with other old gay guy strangers was a thing – Tony would know; Tony’s five-year research into the subculture had been extensive – but he stopped himself, because it was nice, just sitting together across the table in an empty bar. If this was how it was going to be, being friends with Tony, he’d take it.  
  
“My mom’s nice,” Tony said eventually. “Way too nice, and people take advantage all the time, and I can’t visit her and Dad for more than a couple days because it’s so not my speed, but she’s nice. If you’re into that. She’d really like you, actually.”  
  
“Are you sure? Moms usually don’t.” Gob thought about it, and added, “Maybe that’s just my mom. And Lindsay.  I don’t meet a lot of mothers.”  
  
“No, she would. Tall, gorgeous CEO? Who could do with a replacement mom? She’d seriously be all over you.” He added, not quickly enough to stop Gob’s heart lurching in his chest, “I meant ‘gorgeous’ in a friendship way.”  
  
“Oh, no, totally.”  
  
“I’m fake-gay, not fake- _blind_.”  
  
“Sure, and we should... we should be able to say things like that. To each other.”    
  
“I think friends do that, right?”  
  
Gob hadn’t had a lot of friends, and as far as he remembered none that he’d had sex with. He cast around for other relationship-experience he could compare to. “Tony, it’s fine. It’s not anything I wouldn’t say to my brother.”  
  
Tony lifted his drink, smiling at Gob over the rim of the glass, and there it was again, that feeling like his heart had been yanked half a foot to the left. “My mom would be happy we’re just friends, anyway. She was cool about the gay thing but if we were... dating, or whatever, you not being Jewish would be a whole thing, and nobody needs that.”  
  
“I don’t have a problem with converting,” he said without thinking. “...is what I would say, if we were in a relationship and not just friends.” He threw in a laugh to underline how not-serious he was. It came out sounding like he’d forgotten how. “God, can you imagine what my mom would say, though? That’s what I should have told her today. Blah-blah-board meeting, blah-blah-need to shape up and do some real work – hey, mom, guess what, I’m in love with a man.”  
  
Later, wincing at the bathroom mirror, he’d realize he’d bitten his tongue. He didn’t feel a thing.  
  
Tony was staring at him like he had that night, the moment after the masks had come off. But they were friends, and they weren't going to talk about that. He had promised.  
  
“...is what I would say,” Gob said again. “You want another drink?”  



End file.
